Halloween knows to hop off onto the couch. Perez takes the last big gulp of the wine, rises, grabs the shirt and walks to the bathroom. I take the bed apart, and stay as dressed as I am. The cup goes in the dishwasher.
She comes back out, looks at the bed, and at me.
"He doesn't sleep," I explain, "I'll be here making sure nothing happens to you."
She climbs in and I turn the light off. Halloween grabs a ball and jumps on the bed next to her. I doubt that Fog Dude would visit Perez, don't actually know if he can, but if he does, it won't be a long chat. I'm surprised, but she is quickly sound asleep, the night's stress probably more effective than a sleeping pill. I change into him in the bathroom to avoid disturbing her sleep.
I start oatmeal cooking at six, since we have to be in at eight for duty. Perez wakes up, but lies in bed for a while, playing with Halloween. Finally, she sits up, looks at me, pushes her thick black hair away from her face, and says, "Change."
I walk over to the side of the bed, now dressed only in my underwear, grab the way too happy light, and say, "Believe." A flash of light fills the room, and he is standing there. I wait only a few seconds, and squeeze the light back down.
"Is that maple and brown sugar?," she asks.
"It's plain, but I'll put anything you want in it."
She wanders over to the refrigerator and pours herself a glass of orange juice. I put a bunch of potential toppings on the table, and bring over the bowls of cooked oats. She goes for the brown sugar.
She asks me to fetch her uniform from her car, and I tell her that Jen has some clean underwear in her drawer. She laughs just once, looks me in the eye, shakes her head, and asks how I can possibly not know that she and Jen are totally different sizes everywhere.
Perez hits the shower, and I run out to her car to get her uniform. I also bring in the ball that used to be electronic equipment. I slide her clothes through the bathroom door, trying not to peek. There's so much steam, I couldn't see anything even if the door were open. I understand the need for hot showers, so I don't interrupt.
She comes out carrying some of Jen's bathroom stuff, and I go in, a quick shower for me because all the hot water is gone. By 7:30 we're in uniform, and ready to go. I toss Perez the car keys, thank Halloween for her understanding, and she (Perez not Halloween) drives us in to LAX at the speed limit. Obviously, she is not back to normal.
The parking lot has never been this crowded. When we get inside the main building, we understand why. LAX has its own gang unit, and they are all here, 50 of them, watching video in the big meeting room. They know the four young men on the screen, and Perez and I are familiar with them too. We pretend to know nothing, and take seats in the back of the room. The video starts with an unconscious four on the floor, and ends with LAPD officers taking them away.
"The best part is," one of the unit is telling the other late arrivals who came in with us, "they are saying they were attacked and were just defending themselves. One of them said it was a wolf, one a bear, one a werewolf, and one a giant bird."
He confirms that there is no video for the day up to that point, and the DVR was stolen, "which means," he says, "that there is at least one other gang member who was there, probably from a rival gang."
Hard to think of the LAPD as a rival gang, but neither Perez nor I set him straight.
We start our patrol on time. Kiana says not a word for the first two hours, except as needed to help folks in the terminal. Finally, I can't stand it anymore.
"Talk to me," I say, trying not to beg.
"I really don't know what to say. You lay the biggest secret of all secrets on me, you can't expect that I know what to do about it."
"At least we know now that someone is reading your email, but maybe not the guys who we've been following." My comment doesn't exactly follow hers, but I don't know what to do about it either.
"You mean you've been following, Air Force," she sounds almost normal suddenly, "One of us was smart enough to check the video feeds. But yes, someone read that email and tried to have us killed. Which means the thing in your closet must be worth a lot more than it appears."
Perez leads me over to the coffee shop, I buy us our usual iced teas, and we sit at one of the high top wooden tables. She starts a new line of conversation.
"Why haven't you told Jen? Is it because you don't love her?" It's a good thing I had swallowed the tea in my mouth, or it would have ended up all over the place.
I'd say, "Huh" but even that is beyond me.
Perez makes a weak smile at me.
"She knows, Air Force, she knows. That still doesn't explain why you haven't told her."
We're thankfully interrupted by a "Red 7" call on the radio. That's Perez.
"Red 7," she replies.
"You and Air Force 1 needed at Main. Over."
"On our way."
We head back down to Main, the sergeant who gave the presentation this morning meets us. He's built like a rock and nearly takes my hand off when he shakes it.
"Dan Simpson, gang unit. Follow me." He leads us down the hall to the smaller conference room, where I first met the captain. Lieutenant Crane is there, his head presently not stuck up anybody's ass. The chairs are mostly stacked away, and a sea of evidence bags sits on three rows of folding tables.
He points us to the two remaining empty chairs in the room. We sit.
"The Lieutenant and I are about to go over and talk to the Mountain Pacific staff about the incident." He looks at me before continuing. "We thought you might be able to give us some insight before that on what our dirtbags might have been looking for."
I don't even pause, I've had time to think about this answer all night. "Sergeant, I have been thinking about why they might have been there all morning, and have come up empty. There's nothing worth stealing, that's why they took the guard off at night. Who'd want blank flight plan forms? Maybe they were trying to smuggle something onto a flight? Or off of one?"
Crane's creeping me out. He's mad about something and staring at me. Then, for the first time, I hear him speak. He has a question.
"When were you there last?"
"Monday morning, I picked up my flight plan for Hawai'i from dispatch, and met with a man named Ken Montara who was my captain."
"Anything unusual going on then?" He's almost red in the face, it's beyond creepy.
"Absolutely not. Boring routine makes for safe flying."
"Didn't you stop in when you got back?" What's he getting at?
"Sorry, yes. My flight arrived back in at 9:15, and I turned my paperwork in before going home."
"How'd you get home if you left your car here at LAPD?" Oops. Now I see. He thinks he has me.
"Officer Perez and my girlfriend are friends. They met me over at dispatch and took me out to eat and then home from there." Moderate lie. We have to get a hold of Jen before they can follow up.
Simpson goes back to asking the questions. He starts with Kiana.
"Perez, did you see anything unusual while you were there?"
"No sir. I was off duty and helping Simon's girlfriend make fun of him."
He laughs and turns back to me.
"This man Packer who's the airline supervisor, you know him?"
"Yeah, sergeant, he's my dad."
"Thanks. I'll go easy on him."
"Not on my account. He could use a good interrogation."
Everybody laughs except Crane. I think he's thinking the same about me.
Simpson ends the interview, "If you come up with anything let me know."
"I will, and if you want me to look at the interrogation responses to see if something doesn't match procedure, I'll be happy to do that."
We all shake hands and exchange pleasantries. I'm happy for about two seconds, then my eyes drift to the table across from the front of the room. The remnants of my shoes are sitting there in an evidence bag, almost certainly with my fingerprints all over them.
Perez and I walk back upstairs. When we
're alone, she stops and turns to me.
"Your shoes are sitting on the table, and our fingerprints are inside the building." She's her normal observant self.
"I noticed that too. We'll deal. It's become my life."
"Do your clothes always blow up?," Perez' voice goes back to not normal, too weak.
"Yes. Or burn up at high speed. I've also melted a GPS and a phone. Generally, I fly around naked nowadays, it's safer."
She looks at me like I'm crazy, which I probably am. "Superdumbass. Didn't you call yourself that? It fits. And that idiot who thought this up! He's the real dumbass, Air Force, the real dumbass."
We start walking again. She talks one last time, "And Crane, what burr is up his butt?," and then goes silent until we're back at Terminal 7.
Chapter 15
I buy Perez and me some tacos, and take her down onto the flight deck of a jet one more time. We eat for a couple minutes, then I say the thing that's burning around in my head.
"Tell me about Jen."
"Air Force." She's exasperated by the question. "You should talk to her, and you should tell her."
"But," that's as far as I get.
"Simon Packer be a man. You care about her, but you don't love her. She knows that. You don't know her. Talk to her, she might surprise you. She's waited a year for the truth after all, she must see something in you."
"But, she'd want to ride the salami, and I don't think I could handle that."
Perez looks at me funny. "Ride the salami?" Quick desperate laugh from me.
"He is big, you know, he has a salami." I hold my hands apart about a foot. "What if she likes him better than me? What if she only wants the salami? He's huge everywhere."
Perez really laughs. It takes her a couple minutes to regain her composure.
"Holy Mary Mother of God. You're jealous of yourself. You're afraid your girlfriend might like having sex with you too much. I've seen the size of him through those skimpy underwear things. Jen deserves a ride on that salami for all the crap she has to put up with dating a dumbass like you. And, she deserves to know you are going to die. When, exactly, were you planning to let her in on that? Or your parents? Or your sister?"
I think that over for a minute. Perez just stares at me.
"Planning hasn't exactly been my strong suit. Every time I've planned something out, it's gone badly. Besides, if I told my mom now she'd cry every time I saw her for the next two and a half years, then who knows how long after." I tell her about the dream I had right after taking the light.
"Air Force, for once, maybe you're right. Maybe your parents need to see you do good before you tell them. But that doesn't change the fact that Jen deserves to know."
"We're having dinner tonight after shift. Do you want to come?"
"No. Grow some cojones. But I expect you to take me out tomorrow after shift and show me what you can do."
"Deal." That should be fun.
We finish our tacos, climb out of our seats, and are about to leave the aircraft when Perez steps in front of me, and puts a hand on my chest to stop me.
"Air Force, last night is something of a blur. If I didn't thank you for saving my life, thank you." I put my hands on her upper arms and look into those dark brown eyes.
"I knew they couldn't hurt me. I knew I could get you out of there. The only thing I did was trust you with a secret. You, on the other hand, were about to get yourself killed to protect me. I'm the one who should be saying thank you. I'm the one who has a debt to repay."
I release my hands and put them down at my sides. We start walking again, silent for a couple minutes. Then she suggests we go read the interrogation reports.
It takes five minutes to get to the office, and another half hour to conclude that the reports are useless. They were passing by, attacked by an animal, broke into the office and fired their weapons to save themselves. We can't go talk to them and risk them identifying us, though these are people who don't mind spending a couple years in prison, so we're unlikely to get anything out of them anyway. No one they interviewed at Mountain Pacific knows anything. The video feeds start after the fun stops.
We look at the forensics logs. Lots of unknown fingerprints, no matches yet. They will certainly find the two of us before too long. Nothing yet noted on the shoes. At least there's a lot of evidence and it will take a while.
The radio beeps, and we run down to gate 75 to deal with a belligerent drunk getting off a Mountain Pacific flight. The first officer and a couple of the flight attendants are old friends, so I get a standing ovation when I cuff him. Decidedly takes the edge off.
We finish the day wandering the terminal and head out. Between laughing and yelling at me, and a day of regular police work, Perez' demeanor is normal, she has regained herself. I'm happier than I've been since this started. I have someone I can talk to, and my Korean adventure seems to have gone off without a hitch.
She stops me before I can get into Starbuck.
"You know they aren't done with us." She sounds concerned.
"No," I try to sound reassuring, "We're not done with them. We just have to figure out what this thing is."
I must have had a stupid look on my face, because she looks back at me, and says,
"You have that stupid look on your face. What have you done that I need to know about?"
I tell her about the 27th floor, and my trip to Vancouver. She stares at me for a while.
"We have all day tomorrow to think about what to do. Spend tonight fucking Jen, and don't do anything else stupid."
"If that's an order.'
"It is." She laughs, gets in her Mustang and disappears out of the parking lot.
I go get Jen and follow orders, except I don't tell her about him. We roll over and drift off to sleep about 10.
The fog comes rolling in, real fog tonight, or as real as fog gets in the dream fog world. Cool, wet, not swirling, just gently drifting, no wind. Fog Dude has his little pet fog balls with him, swirling around the man with his own wind. If he is a man. He gets out more words than usual tonight. Maybe Halloween is cutting him some slack.
"Good work in Korea." He looks up and shakes his head. "Alan Shepard. Suborb...." And I am wide awake with a wet cheek, wondering about the last part. I'll search the Internet later. Jen heads off to work, I roll for the airport.
Perez is waiting for me in the parking lot. She is holding the Times in her hand.
"Did you see?" I look puzzled and shake my head. She opens the paper up so I can read the front page.
The headlines scream at me, "China Destroys N Korean Site." "Airbase Bombed in Retaliation." "Troops Massing at Border."
"Fuck me, I'm an idiot." Fuck me. Fuck me.
"That's Jen's job, and you aren't. Whoever came up with this idiotic idea is to blame here. You're doing the best you can."
"That's very comforting. I'm starting a nuclear war, but it's OK, because I'm doing the best I can. Fuck me."
She hits me on the arm. "That's Jen's job. Speaking of Jen, did you tell her?"
She hits me on the arm again. It must have been my face.
"It's a good thing I can heal myself, or I'd be a mass of bruises."
"Not as bruised as you're going to be Air Force, not as bruised."
"Can we get back to my starting a nuclear war, which might be, oh, a tad more important than me having a talk with my girlfriend?" It's my moderate sarcastic voice.
She hits me again. "There is not going to be a war, and it's not your fault."
I don't say anything, hoping not to get hit again. We walk through the main building, cross the tunnel and wander down to Terminal 7. We go into the office to check in, but no one is home. They must be out on patrol. I have a random thought.
"How much trouble would I get in if I did a non-job-related Internet search before we went out?" She looks at me funny again, I bend sideways to keep away from her fist.
"What are you searching for now? You can't buy cojones, you have to grow them."
"Was."
"Was?"
"Why?"
I explain last night's visit from Fog Dude. She picks up her phone and speed dials. Who ever's on the other end answers.
"Dad, I'm here with Simon. He got on to Alan Shepard, don't ask him how it's too stupid to relay, and we've got to get to work anyhow, but please give him the one minute rundown." She hands me the phone.
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